More robo-call claims

Feb 27, 2012, 12:41 AM EST

The “Robocon Scandal,” as it is now being
dubbed, is going to blow right up in the Commons today, as MPs return from a
constituency week. Of course, now some Conservatives claim that they were
targeted as well, though the fact that nobody said anything until now does
stretch credibility a bit, considering that there are plenty of contemporaneous
accounts of other ridings being targeted during the election. Meanwhile, The Canadian Press has a really
interesting piece on what the privacy implications are for the electors’ list
that gets used for calls like these.

Here’s a look at all of the NDP leadership
candidate absences in the House. Something about showing up for work if you want a promotion, and all of that. Of course, it too gets its data from voting
records, since the House doesn’t keep attendance records (like the Senate), but
you can see some of the candidates equivocating and repeating the baseless
untruths about Ignatieff’s absences. Once again, let me explain, as one of the
few reporters who bothers to show up to QP four days a week – Ignatieff was
there quite a lot. He didn’t vote on a number of bills because he made a policy
of not voting on private members’ business as a matter of course, in order to
free his caucus so they wouldn’t feel compelled to vote like
he did on it. Hence, taking “attendance” by checking the voting record was an
unfair assessment. Not to say that these metrics aren’t damning about the NDP
leadership candidates, because let me remind you that I’m there for QP
almost every day, and they’re pretty much always absent from there, too – not just
from the votes. In fact, people who follow me on the Twitter Machine will know
that I make a note of it if one of those candidates is actually in attendance.
And yes, it is an extremely rare occurrence.

Vic Toews continues to put the shine on the lawful access bill and is now including the spectre of preventing suicides as one of
the benefits of the bill as well as stopping child pornographers as the
justification for doing without warrants.

Stephen Harper personally signed off on a
massive hospitality tab for visiting European bureaucrats here to discuss
budget cuts. Age of austerity, everyone!

And Alberta doctors are still billing the
province to “treat” homosexuality like they would treat other mental
illnesses. This time the province’s excuse is that it’s an old billing-code
standard, one they can’t update until every other province in the country does
too.